Friday, March 28, 2014

3. Where do we go from here? The long ride route.

The idea came slowly. Get to Johnson City, TN by June 16th. Original trip duration went from one week to two then two weeks to four. Steve was the first to throw out the idea of NY to CA to TN. I threw out the idea of camping, knowing that hotel bills can add up quickly over the course of a month.

The seeds were planted and simultaneously as we begin to crawl out of depths of a tough NY winter our ideas about this trip have begun to sprout. At this point we are quite well committed, family and work has been notified. The shopping prep is in full force. We have a preliminary route in place.

The general route idea was to head towards San Jose, because Steve has relatives that he hasn't seen in 15+ years near there. OK, that works. Steve's primary goal is to ride on secondary roads only taking highway when needed. My goal is also to ride secondary roads but also to sight see. So I started with some places I want to see, even if its just for a few minutes to ooh, aah, snap a photo and go. The list started like this, Yellowstone, Devils Tower, Badlands, Grand Canyon, Pacific Ocean.

When I started to map locate these places I realized that I did want to do a couple of heavy mileage days to get out of the Northeast. Places like, PA, OH, IL, IA we could manage on a one week trip any time. In my mind the trip really starts in South Dakota. I know with motorcycling it's the journey, not the destination, but I promise it will be about the journey once we hit South Dakota.

So the image below is our tentative route, knowing that we will probably divert from it after just a few days.

Our stopping points generally take us to either campgrounds or reasonably priced hotels. We will not make a single reservation, except for Johnson City. We are hoping to hit up family in CA, NV, CO and MO. Of course, we can't guarantee when we will arrive, but if need be we will find a place to stay.

In other news, we have tested out the camp stove with some Mountain House Lasagna with Meat Sauce. I bought denatured alcohol at Walmart. I now know to find it in near the paint. It was pretty tasty (the lasagna, not the denatured alcohol), although the use of the word lasagna was very optimistic. More like rotini with meat sauce.

My sleeping bag also arrived in the mail and I have tested it out with my sleep pad but inside the house. The spot locator has been ordered and we are currently shopping for a helmet communication system, which we have never used before.

We should be on the road 8 weeks from tomorrow...I move the trip predictor-meter to 75% chance of happening. I'm pretty sure I won't predict 100% chance until we pull out of the driveway!!!

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